An application of minimum spanning trees to travel planning - Informit

More documents

Recommendations

Info

4 Fitina et al., An application of minimum spanning trees to travel planning Travel in Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea is a country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country's geography is diverse and, in places, extremely rugged. A spine of mountains runs the length of the island of New Guinea, forming a populous highlands region. Dense rainforests can be found in the lowland and coastal areas. This terrain has made it difficult for the country to develop transportation infrastructure. In some areas, airplanes are the only mode of transport (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea) Airlines Air Niugini is the national airline of Papua New Guinea. It operates flights from the capital city Port Moresby to at least 10 overseas destinations. Within Papua New Guinea it services all the major airports in the country. On any given day it operates between 50 to 70 flights between any two destinations (nodes). Bookings may be made in one of several Air Niugini offices and agencies around the country and overseas. As well, travelers can make bookings over the internet at the address http://www.airniugini.com.pg. On this website there are two interactive maps, a domestic version and an international version, which convey the same type of information. The domestic interactive map consists of the map of Papua New Guinea with the major cities in towns, presumably where the airports are located, depicted with grey circles. These are the nodes. When a user places the mouse over a node, red lines appear that lead out from that particular node, to other nodes on the map that have flights to and from the chosen node. These red lines are our edges. The figure below shows what happens on the interactive map when the mouse points to the Port Moresby node. Figure 5: Domestic airline interactive map of Papua New Guinea Airlines PNG is a private airline that operates flights between Papua New Guinea and Australia and between numerous destinations within Papua New Guinea. It also has a website at http://www.apng.com/ where the intending
Contemporary PNG Studies: DWU Research Journal Volume 12 May 2010 5 traveler can make bookings. This site includes a route map which is basically a graph depicting destinations (nodes) and all routes (edges) between the nodes. In addition to the airlines described above, there are several other private and provincial-owned airlines that operate within certain regions in the country. Sea travel Passenger ships, freighters, charters, outboard dingies and canoes all offer links between several ports and islands. Perhaps traveling by ship is cheaper, although sometimes can be uncomfortable. For example, boats travel between Lae and Madang and are run by Lutheran Shipping with facilities including passenger cabins, accommodation and meals. They also stop in Finschhafen and Umboi Island. Several cruise ship companies offer cruises to various ports (nodes) in the country. For example the Aurora offers cruises from Sydney to Rabaul and thence other ports in the country. The Orion Cruise Expeditions offers 5-star luxury trips to the Milne Bay islands, thence to the Solomons and other Pacific destinations. Travel costs and the weighting of a travel route Travel cost is generally expensive; travel by boat within the country is generally cheaper than traveling by air. For travelers on a budget, choosing a particular route may be important if one is to keep within one’s budget. In the next section we investigate a mathematical method that may be used either manually, or within a computerized system, that can determine less expensive routes between any two nodes that are far apart. According to the Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (review of the PNG air transport industry, 2006), the transport cost and the lack of transport infrastructure have been identified as major contributors to the poor performance of the tourism industry as a sector that is particularly reliant on air transportation. Other factors contributing to choice of air travel/transportation other than fares are, seat comfort, meals provided onboard, staff presentation, onboard information and entertainment, reliability in performance, journey time, reputation, passenger benefit programs, disability facilities, free baggage allowance, coordination, etc. can form part of the weighting on a graph (or tree). We see therefore that from the mathematical point of view the weight of an edge is a factor of fare, comfort, reliability, time traveled, distance traveled, free baggage allowance, etc. To simplify things we will assume that w = w( k, d, b, r) where w, k, d, b and r denote weight, unit fare, distance, free baggage allowance, and reputation of the transport company respectively.
Page 1 and 2: Contemporary PNG Studies: DWU Resea
Page 3: Contemporary PNG Studies: DWU Resea
Page 11: Contemporary PNG Studies: DWU Resea

An application of minimum spanning trees to travel planning - Informit

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?